Former Employee To Head Dep Office

In an administrative shakeup, a former Florida Department of Environmental Protection employee has been brought back to lead the agency's West Palm Beach office.

Melissa Meeker will replace Carlos Rivero de Aguilar as director of the DEP's Southeast District Office, DEP Secretary David Struhs said this week.

Meeker, who worked for the DEP from 1996 through early 1999, currently is a South Florida Water Management District senior planner. She said she is supposed to assume her new post on Sept. 22.

Rivero de Aguilar, who joined the DEP as an engineer, will leave a job he has held for five years, overseeing enforcement of state environmental regulations from St. Lucie to Miami-Dade counties.

Struhs also is replacing DEP district directors in Tampa and Fort Myers. Those bumped out are leaving the agency entirely, the DEP said.

DEP spokeswoman Catherine Arnold said Struhs, appointed by Gov. Jeb Bush, wanted a proven consensus-builder in West Palm Beach, someone who understood how to manage water resource issues "in the context of a fast-growing South Florida."

She also said Struhs sought a person he thought could ably navigate the complexities of Everglades and Lake Okeechobee issues.

DEP managers are charged with following Struhs' mandate to strive for "more protection, less process" Arnold said. The aim is to weed out bureaucratic red tape that accomplishes little or no environmental protection, she said.

Meeker joined the DEP as an ecosystem management coordinator in West Palm Beach and then worked as office administrator for the Port St. Lucie office. She left the DEP in February for a job coordinating water quality protection for the water district.

Neil Santaniello can be reached at nsantaniello@sun-sentinel.com or 561-274-8928.